


While the Bat's Away

by Silverheart



Series: Bats and Birds [9]
Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, I hate race track levels, date, sort of meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4564950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverheart/pseuds/Silverheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Tim and Barbara did while Batman told Gordon about the Joker disease.</p><p>Also, a very bad day in the development of the Riddler robots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While the Bat's Away

“So what are we supposed to do with a day off?”

“It’s really more of a half-day,” Tim said, enjoying the feel of the sun as they walked through the park. It had been too long.

“Six of one, half dozen of the other.”

“I keep expecting to get called in.” He shook his head. “This…this is a big one, Barb.”

“A form of prion, you said— no. No, we are not going to talk about work on your day off.”

“What else do you have in mind?”

She grabbed his hand. It was the fiery lead edge of fall, with all the leaves changed but most still on the trees. “Trouble.”

Her grin was infectious. “Well, then lead the way.”

She did, moving much faster than people tended to think she could. “You remember the Arkham City hearings?”

He frowned. “Too well.”

“Well, Nigma was one of the, as my dad said, ‘gimmes’.”

“Great.”

“He likes to hang out here during the day and annoy people. Not his normal scale, but it’s probably what he does while working on his next master plan.”

She stopped at a hill overlooking a picnic ground. He could see the Riddler fiddling with some kind of controller. A couple dozen bright green things were zipping all over the place. The Riddler had robots. Wonderful.

One walked up to a family that had been planning on a picnic. It stuck its mechanical face right into their little girl’s. She screamed and started crying.

“Just a big bully,” Barb said. She pulled out her remote hacking device. “He should be arrested, but the GCPD’s tentative about touching any of the Arkham City ‘survivors’. I’m going to scare him off so people can enjoy their lives.”

“I thought you said no work?”

“This isn’t work. This is fun. Especially because there is a huge clumsy backdoor in their programming.”

Tim laughed and sat down in the grass. “Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”

Barb lifted an eyebrow and then turned her attention to the scene below. 

The robots froze, first. Nigma seemed confused, bending over his controller and tweaking something.

That’s when they moved to circle him. He didn’t notice for a few moments, dismantling his controller with lightning speed. When he did, he held the pieces limply for a moment, then began talking to them, increasingly frantic as they remained still.

Tim had always found the Riddler’s voice really, really annoying, and was glad he was too far to hear whatever he had started shouting. “You’d think,” Barb said, “That someone so smart would know that shouting at them isn’t going to help.”

“I think he’s scared.”

“He should be.” She did something with the device.

The robots closed slowly on Nigma. He backed off, scrambling over the back of the bench, but they’d closed him in.

One snatched him and held him over its head, which he started kicking at, still shouting. The others approached and snatched his arms. Despite the good hit he got on another, kicking its head off and disabling it, two others caught hold of his legs. He was spread eagled behind the bench now, held stiffly by his own robots.

Barb tapped her chin thoughtfully, then made a few adjustments. The robots marched jauntily off with their maker. He was audibly cursing them out now as they barreled forward, heedless of any tree branches slapping him in the face.

“Where are they going?” Tim asked, watching them as they forced their way through some hedges and vanished from sight. 

“As far as they can in a straight line. Eventually their batteries will run out, or they’ll come to an obstacle they can’t go through. But it’ll keep him busy for a while. So will trying to figure out what happened.”

“Ever the hero, even when the sun’s out and the bat’s away,” Tim said. She swatted him on the face. “You are, you know.”

“Your half day’s ticking by, Boy Wonder.”

He laughed again and stood up, brushing grass from his jeans. He held his hand to her and she took it without hesitation. “I hear,” he said, “That Billy’s Burgers has an entire pumpkin-flavored menu.”

“They do.”

“Really? I thought that was just a random text from Dick. He told me Kevin Bacon was dead the first week I was trapped down there.”

She poked him hard in the side. “And you believed it, too, didn’t you? Some genius you are. Come on. _You_ can try the pumpkin burger. I’ll stick with the shake.”

Not bad for a half day off, Tim thought. Enjoy the sunny fall day, watch his beautiful girlfriend defeat evil with her brain, and then get to try a pumpkin burger. Not bad at all.

**Author's Note:**

> VENGEANCE! And some cute before the storm.


End file.
